True friends are priceless.
Picking the right friends can be as important as choosing the right nutrients for your body, they are the sustenance for healthy spirit.
Surround yourself with people who are supportive –but not “yes men”, needful –but not “needy”, engaging but not “controlling”, honest –especially with themselves so they can be honest with you, helpful- but also willing to be selfish with their time so they can maintain their own balance, generous – but not to a fault, and people who you can respect as well as who respect you in return.
There are obviously very long lists of things that are important and healthy in continued relationships. I’ve said it hundreds of times. I am blessed, very blessed with good friends. Friendships that have lasted decades. I am very lucky and I know it, and not a day goes by that I don’t wonder how I got so fucking lucky.
But something has begun to creep in to a couple of my key relationships lately. Something that is tainting my ability to feel generous with my time and energy and this foggy sense of my own stinginess is bleeding from these unhealthy relationships into my healthy ones and upsetting the balance. It has to do with the give/take aspect of service/gifts and mutual respect.
I have begun to see a pattern in my life and people I know, a pattern that I am as much responsible for as my associates. My relationships with people who suffer from a sense of “unworthiness” are many. In fact almost everyone I know has a complex to some degree about their perceived sense of worth.
This becomes dangerous and unhealthy when your partner/friends need validation – especially in a love language they strongly believe they are providing.
I have learned to recognize something that may be a sign for people who will potentially become the unhealthy kind of unworthy.
Non-Receivers.
You can test it with gifts, and by gifts I mean something physical or material, not energetic or service related. (I’ll explain why, in a minute)
Non-receivers are so “unworthy” in their own minds and spirits – that when you give them something, even something small (a pair of earrings, a book, etc.) they take it with the body language and or mentality that you were not sincere. On many occasions when I give a gift (which is generally rare because I am more of an energetic and service giver than a material giver) my “unworthy” friends put it someplace with a “I’ll just leave it here where you can find it in case you need it back” or “thanks, but why are you giving me something” or they toss it casually somewhere and forget it. This leads me on a mental trail of, “god, I’m such a bad gifter. I never hit the mark.” Or “it must not have been her size or color.” Whatever. The point goes much deeper though and I am just as guilty of this as most of my Non-receiver friends – because I have thought of myself as “unworthy” for years.
The deeper message of non-receiving is that the brain or spirit of the non-receiver does not register love or affection from the gesture. They are still as unworthy as they ever were.
This is were it becomes dangerous. Because my love languages are “quality time” and “acts of service” that is how I most give love to people I care about. It is an investment of my time and energy. I’m often the responsible one of the group and have multiple sets of house keys for my friends with animals or kids, and I don’t mind (when it’s an emergency) taking care of houses, pets or children. Quality time is my offer to hang out, get coffee, play pool, go to a movie, etc. Services are let me cook for you, baby sit, put me on your emergency contacts, pick up the check, drive you home, take you to a dr. appt., read your cards –whatever.
The danger comes when loving a non-receiver and providing gifts on the energetic and spiritual level only to have them not acknowledge it.
“You never do anything for me.” Or “you don’t do enough.”
The thing about a non-receiver is that it will NEVER be enough, because they cannot mentally/emotionally/spiritually RECEIVE the gifts to fill up that hole in themselves that triggers a sense of gratitude and fullness or ABUNDANCE.
They never receive abundance.
Therefore, no matter what you put in, or how hard you try, or what you give… you, as a friend will not have been/done/given enough. You cannot ever fill their emptiness.
This is Toxic. It goes beyond needy and into a role that if you try to fix it, you are constantly putting in – and they will also put in, they will give as well – but they also imagine that you are not putting in as much as they are because they are always at a deficit in their own mind.
This is not a fixable dynamic. There is just no way to win.
I was one of those unworthy people, especially when I was married because I didn’t like myself. One day Reggie said, “You keep telling me you don’t deserve this stuff (gifts). It’s exhausting and one day I might just get tired and agree with you.”
Ultimately, he did, and on this point I will concede he was right.
It is not anyone else’s job to make me feel worthy. Not their job to make me feel worth love, or gifts or friendship. That’s my job. It’s hard sometimes, but it’s my job.
So I find myself with this problem in a couple of my friendships, the unworthiness due payments seem to be coming all at once, and like most due payments they come from people who believe they are unworthy – which also breeds passive aggressive behaviors and dialogue – so this passive aggressive way to get needs met (i.e. filling up their internal vacancy due to low self worth) becomes not just toxic but combustible and very dangerous. Because I respond to passive aggressive behavior like baking soda responds to vinegar.
I’m not saying my shit doesn’t stink. Because I can be a better friend in many regards and I know it. I am lucky with my friends and I’m blessed to have long lasting relationships. But part of that blessing comes with the knowledge that I choose my friends carefully, I hope they do the same. Because my ability to be a good friend/partner and companion to those I cherish comes from having stable balanced and nourishing relationships all around. It’s like a web, and when one section of the web is toxic it robs strength from what can be given to the others.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, there is a difference between having a genuine need and distress which I am happy to jump in and help and like a web, when that energy is diverted to the one with the greatest momentary crisis the other strands (i.e. other friends) also divert their energy to me to indirectly help alleviate the energetic burden of me helping someone else. All friendship networks work this way. That’s why it’s called a network.
That is why it’s unfair for me to draw on that webbed energy of my loved ones, to continually help people who will ultimately not receive the gifts/aid/love anyway.
Balance. Give and take. The oldest rule in the friendship book. But part of “take” half of that rule, is to absorb what is being given, to take the service, the acts, the small treasure of a thoughtful gift, the advice, the possessions and the generosity of touch, a hug a compliment and a smile or just an invitation to a cup of coffee.
If you want to be a good friend, and I do want to be a good friend. Give unflinchingly until you can give no more, but be willing to receive and not just take but receive what is given with gratitude and plant that gift within yourself as though it were a priceless sequoia seed. Plant these gifts in your soul as though they are rain and soil and sunshine and allow them to sprout and bloom and fill your vacancy with magic – because I can guarantee you, vacancy is self-created and only you have the ability to acknowledge when is it full.
I can also guarantee that I will not ever give to someone I perceive as unworthy of my gifts. EVER. So if I give you something; trust, a smile a compliment, and invitation or a deed – it is only because I believe you deserve it… and I will only believe you deserve it until I realize that it is becoming toxic to me as a friend that I am not being received and when that happens – I can also assure you that I will no longer think you deserve it and I will stop letting myself give to you on any level. I will give nothing until you believe you are worthy of having it.
I will add the disclaimer that I still struggle sometimes with worthiness. I come from a family tradition of unworthiness and I still forget that I am a valuable friend and partner and feel weak in my resolve that I am a contributing person. But because I DESIRE to be a good friend. I want to be the best friend I can be to those I am so blessed to have – I bust my ass to work on my inner well so I don’t drain the web, and I am also working to learn to receive with more of a sense of gratitude so that my friends will hopefully never know how exhausting it is to always reach out to me and never have the satisfaction of feeling like they have made a difference in my life.
Because they have, my friends have made all the difference in my life. They have been spiritual vitamins and joy and I pray to the goddess that I am repaying that balance and keeping those I treasure healthy in soul with my own love. Because that’s what friends do.
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